How to Hack the Vote and Steal the Election

divisionbyzero writes "Many people have asked for it so that the government will have to deal with it. So here it is: a guide to stealing an election that uses electronic voting machines written by Jon Stokes over at Arstechnica. From the article: "In all this time, I've yet to find a good way to convey to the non-technical public how well and truly screwed up we presently are, six years after the Florida recount. So now it's time to hit the panic button: In this article, I'm going to show you how to steal an election.""

Comments

Been done already

[MECC]

Its already been done.

From the referenced url: '"Electronic voting machines also caused widespread problems in Florida, where Bush bested Kerry by 381,000 votes. When statistical experts from the University of California examined the state's official tally, they discovered a disturbing pattern: "The data show with 99.0 percent certainty that a county's use of electronic voting is associated with a disproportionate increase in votes for President Bush. Compared to counties with paper ballots, counties with electronic voting machines were significantly more likely to show increases in support for President Bush between 2000 and 2004."'

'Charles Stewart III, an MIT professor who specializes in voter behavior and methodology, was initially skeptical of the study - but was unable to find any flaw in the results. "You can't break it - I've tried," he told The Washington Post. "There's something funky in the results from the electronic-machine Democratic counties."'

Re:Premium access ?

[HWguy]

Yes, you are missing something. The entire article is available. You just have to click through it page by page. The PDF is a convenience for subscribers. You can make your own PDF with just a little work if that's what you need.

Email this story to your representative

[nuzak]

Go IMMEDIATELY to http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and send them an email/contact form entitled "How to Steal an Election", with the URL http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s in the body. Vary the title if you prefer (I'm open to suggestions), and please do add something in your own words about how much the unaccountability and lack of transparency concerns you.

Repeat this process for http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/ senators_cfm.cfm (the Senate's small enough that they just list them all on one page)

After about a thousand folks do this, a staffer might actually go print out the story and hand it to their congresscritter in a brief.

I'd also like to ask the Ars Technica people to make an exception for this story and make the PDF available to non-subscribers, as it would really help to disseminate this story to the right people. I'm not really sure how to go about contacting them.

Here's my letter (slightly munged of course by slashdot):

I recently came across "How to Steal an Election" at http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s which lays out in rather devastating detail how flawed the current system of electronic voting is. I am concerned that our election process has effectively been privatized by a small number of companies, some of which are overtly partisan in their politics, and none held accountable for the numerous and easily-exploitable security flaws in their equipment. One of the equipment companies in particular has taken to smear campaigns and litigation against its critics in an attempt to silence them.

I understand that voting should and must be accessible to the disabled, but this can be done without compromising the security and integrity of our elections. Slot machines in Nevada are subjected to extremely rigorous design standards for security, while voting machines have no such standards at all. This situation cannot go on -- I urge you to secure our elections with appropriate legislation.

[signature stuff removed]

Re:Know Where To Look

[Rob the Bold]

``Expect it to take place in places where Candidate X carries 70-75% of the vote.

That is, expect it to take place in places where Candidate X carries 75-80% of the vote.''

Why change these results if your candidate already won anyway?

Why? To win a state and the state's electoral votes (in a presidential race).

In the US, the president is elected by the Electoral College. Each state sends a certain number of "Electors" to the Electoral College to cast their vote's for that state's winning candidate. So on a state-by-state basis, it's a winner-take-all system. So you want to change outcomes in counties in order to win a whole state. Here's a way to cheat with the above system (minimizing chances of getting caught):

1. Pick a populous state with a close election like Ohio or Florida or several others.

2. Adjust the vote for your candidate up by 5 or 10% in counties where you expect him to win. This increases the overall statewide vote for your candidate. Enough, you hope, to push your candidate over the top.

3. Your candidate wins the state, gets those electors, and wins the Electoral College vote.

4. Profit.

Re:In two easy steps ...

[lixee]

1. Make sure head of company that supplies voting machines is a vociferous supporter of your party

This actually happened a few months ago in Mexico; http://www.correntewire.com/mexico_calderons_broth er_in_law_wrote_the_vote_counting_software_and_its _already_been_hacked

If you're not convinced the election has been stolen, check out this excerpt from an article by McNeills:

Victor Romero is a Doctor of physics who specialises in statistics and randomness at the National University of Mexico. He studied the electoral commission computer results closely and he believes there is strong evidence of interference. Dr Romero explained to me a very unusual statistical pattern he noticed with the PRD vote as the tallies came into towards the end. "The PRD was winning and then suddenly at about 70% they start losing and never even gained .01 of a percentage," he explained. It seems incredible that as the last 30% of results came in, the PRD share of votes never increased. "It could be like this and then like that," Dr Romero explains, moving his hands up and down, "More of one party and less than another. But not in order. The order here is completely unexplainable."

You can buy them from Diebold

[caffeine_monkey]

Unbelieveably, Diebold actually has an ecommerce site where you can buy all their electronic voting machine products online, including memory cards, security tape, and access keys. I'm really hoping they verify that you're an elections official before they actually ship the stuff to you:

http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/cgi-bin/desi_cata log.pl?section=9

Here you go - buy a dozen keys, for you and your friends:

http://www.diebold.com/nasadmk/cgi-bin/desi_cata log.pl?section=9&id=163

On a funny/sad note, the front page of their election products site as a glaring coding error (%=rs("newsdate")%):

http://www.diebold.com/dieboldes/

Re:But what about

[Hannibal_Ars]

Ok, cracks about my (in)famous lack of humility aside, you have a great point. This article took me a week from concept to execution, and over half that time was spent making the diagrams. Ultimately, I did a little over two days of basic technical research for this (including email correspondence with security experts in this area). I am not an infosec expert and I don't pretend to be--I'm just good at digesting tech info and turning it into a form that a non-specialist audience can grasp.

There are many Slashdot readers who could get up to speed on how to really steal an election in about half a day (or less) using publicly available documentation. The hardware isn't that complex at all, and the vulnerabilities in Windows (for the GEMS server) and WinCE (for the machine) are very well-known.

What I've described here is very, very low-hanging fruit for anyone with real security expertise.

Re:Lack of ethics

[rblum]

Please do not confuse religious fascists with Christians. They might call themselves that, but they are not. There are plenty of decent Christians out there.